Ciclos econômicos, mercado de trabalho e a pós-graduação em economia no Brasil

Abstract

Despite the widespread belief that postgraduate education improves individual performance in the labor market and the nation's economic outcomes, there are surprisingly few empirical tests for this conjecture in the international literature. In Brazil, in turn, studies are scarce. In order to fill this important gap, this Thesis presents a combination of three essays whose objectives are: to identify the influence of economic cycles on enrollments, degrees, dropouts and dismissals in postgraduate programs; to verify the relationship between postgraduate education and post-graduate work income; and to analyze the association between economic cycles and the wages of incoming and permanent postgraduates in the labor market in periods of recession and economic expansion. The three essays present an economic approach with microeconometric techniques applied to a longitudinal data structure. The database used comprises the combination of data from individuals available at ANPEC (Associação Nacional dos Centros de Pós-Graduação em Economia), at CAPES (Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento do Pessoal de Nível Superior) and at RAIS (Relação Annual de Informações Sociais), with the economic indicators available in the PNAD (Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domícilio). Chapter 1 deals with the general introduction of this Thesis. Chapter 2 deals with the relationship between unemployment rates and enrollment in postgraduate programs in Economics in Brazil for the period 2007 to 2019. The model estimates were performed using the pooled logit method, to identify the relationship between the economic cycles and enrollment and permanence in postgraduate studies. Additionally, it looked for to obtain the influence of economic cycles on the choice of postgraduate program level (academic master's, professional master's and doctorate). The estimates were divided by gender of the individual, in order to verify possible discrepancies in the results by gender. The results indicated that enrollments in postgraduate courses in Economics are pro-cyclical for women, that is, when there is an increase in the unemployment rate, there is a reduction in the probability of enrollments and titles of women in postgraduate programs. degree in Economics, while, for men, enrollments are countercyclical, which means that an increase in the unemployment rate leads to an increase in the propensity to enroll and hold degrees in postgraduate courses in Economics. However, this is a non-linear association. Chapter 3 addresses the job market for new masters in Economics in Brazil. Considering that in Brazil the gateway to stricto sensu postgraduate studies is the master's degree, the objective was: i) to verify the probability that new masters in Economy get a full-time job; ii) evaluate the performance of new masters in terms of salary returns; iii) survey the occupational sectors where they operate; iv) describe the differentials by age, sex, and classification of the graduate program; v) and verify the difference in occupations and wage earnings of female and male postgraduate students. Based on stacked data, a probit model was used whose results indicated that socioeconomic characteristics, as well as obtaining degrees in the best evaluated postgraduate programs, positively affect the average starting salary. Another important result reveals that obtaining a position outside the educational/academic sector implies higher salary premiums than those in academic institutions. In Chapter 4, the objective was to analyze the cyclicality of real wages through monthly earnings, during the period 2011-2018 for Brazilian workers with master's and doctoral degrees in Economics, male and female separately, employed full-time, who remained in a company for more than a year (stayers) and workers who stayed in a company for less than a year (movers). A fixed effects model was used with controls for observed and unobserved worker heterogeneity and unobserved firm heterogeneity. The main results showed that, for individuals who stayed for more than a year in the company (stayers), the unemployment rate showed a pro-cyclical effect on real wages. However, when evaluated separately, by gender, the relationship between the economic cycle and real wages showed an acyclical result for male workers and a countercyclical behavior of real wages for female workers. Regarding the fixed effect of companies, there was no significance of the variables related to unemployment. These results point to salary rigidity in the earnings of Masters and Doctors in Economics in the formal labor market.